I do work for Google, but not on anything phone-related, and have no more information about what goes into phone design decisions than most others randomly samp

I do work for Google, but not on anything phone-related, and have no more information about what goes into phone design decisions than most others randomly sampled on HN. Consequently, no, I have no market data on what drives phone replacement, though my own limited circle of personal experience suggests either catastrophic failure or a threshold of the device performing unusably poorly as the most common reasons, more than wanting a shiny upgrade. The phone would probably be more than 1mm thicker in order to accommodate a sturdy mount for the modular thing to slot into alone, let alone whatever additional wiring overhead might be involved for having enough bandwidth to speak arbitrary optical device protocols encapsulated in some standard - and then you might have a failure as version 1.x can only speak up to 2K resolution, 2.x 4K, and so on, so you might end up needing a phone upgrade _anyway_ to get that 4k camera. Yes, paying upfront for a device like the Pixel buys you X years of device updates, but there are plenty of people who can't afford to buy a phone for the upfront price all at once, even if it might offer cost savings on modular upgrades later. I might also take that tradeoff, but then, I prioritize durability in my phones over tiny size, since I have relatively large hands and a habit of breaking my phones.